Comment by nonrandomstring

> Shouldn't the scammers pay the cleanup charges?

No. First, the primary culprit is who designs and deploys a mechanism to do harm. If I set a lethal trap on my property with a sign saying "Beware the 10,00 Volt mantrap", I am not excused when a burglar is injured - even though they are breaking the law by trespass. Secondly, it seems that the manufacturer gets to decide, arbitrarily and post-facto (post-sale/agreement) what constitutes a "scammer". Finally, with "e-fuses" you are setting a trap mechanism on my property which I have purchased in fair expectation of my rights.

> it's on you to ensure that the thing can't be rendered inoperable by a (third-party?) software update

I believe in many places like the US, it could be breaking the law to ensure that, since reverse engineering and circumvention of protections would be required.

Of course you're right that there's a sort of moral responsibility on people not to vandalise serviceable goods such that they become waste. But people throw away perfectly working technology every day.

If by "third party" (I think we would use "first party" here) you mean the vendor/manufacturer when you say:

> it's not the (vendors) responsibility to account for your hardware when they do software updates.

then I heartily disagree. It's certainly their moral responsibility, and, unless they offer owners a reasonable way to disable updates, it ought to be their legal responsibility too.

But that's not what's at issue. Otherwise your argument makes it seem like the update "accidentally" damaged the owners property. Quite the contrary, the vendor is sending out updates designed to cause harm, and in full knowledge and punitive intent. Am I mistaken?

> Doing software updates that brick tampered hardware is harder to make a sarcastic argument about.

I don't follow you. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit and discouraged per HN guidelines in favour of arguing in "good faith".